Swedish indie brand Xlash Cosmetics on eye care: ‘We don’t think it’s explored enough’

Founded in 2012, the Sweden-headquartered indie brand offered a range of eyelash and eyebrow products, including serums, mascaras and gels, with a 28-day lengthening eyelash serum its long-standing best-seller. And whilst the brand had since moved into skin care and hair care, the core space for the brand remained eye care – an area it saw huge potential in.

“For us, it’s really important to claim that position in eye care and the category because we believe it has great potential in it and we don’t think it’s explored enough,”​ said Anna Susic, chief commercial officer at Xlash Cosmetics.

“And there really is much to do within that category,”​ Susic told CosmeticsDesign-Europe at Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna at the end of April.

‘Tangible results that everybody can enjoy and see’​

Xlash Cosmetics’ core focus was developing “result-focused products”​ – a large reason the company believed it had seen such success in the eye care space so far, she said.

And producing “tangible results that everybody can enjoy and see”,​ she said, would continue to be central to innovation moving forward.

Asked what the company’s NPD pipeline looked like, Susic said Xlash Cosmetics was exploring “many different angles” ​to eye care – across skin care and cosmetics. It had recently, for example, launched undereye vitamin C gel pads designed to brighten the skin that were “selling extremely well”. ​

European expansion – e-commerce, beauty salons and retail​

Importantly, Xlash Cosmetics was focused on widening its presence further across Europe.

Already available online and in several beauty salons as well as some brick and mortar stores, the goal now was to edge into new markets and build reputation via e-commerce and influencer marketing and build out a stronger retail footprint through strategic business-to-business partnerships.

“For B2B partnerships, we’re actually looking for very strong partners that can support us with brick and mortar sales on-the-ground; that have local expertise of the markets,”​ Susic said. And that might be with distributors, retailers directly or professional salons – the latter of which was a particularly important avenue for the brand, she said.

“We always try to establish a presence with professional salons, specifically those that work within that segment of lash lifts, extensions etc. because it’s something we have found to be really strong – that recommendation from a trusted source.”​

Consumers in these salons, she said, were already highly engaged in eye lash and brow care, so Xlash Cosmetics was an apt product to upsell. The company already worked with more than 1,000 salons in Sweden but wanted to stretch this further, in Sweden and wider Europe.

Beyond Europe? ‘Still a lot of potential’​

Once the company had expanded sufficiently in Europe, Susic said the next step would be to “regroup”​ and see where the next move might be; Asia-Pacific, the Americas or elsewhere.

“There are many buyers from markets we have talked about that don’t have a strong eyelash serum or eye care brand presence in the markets, so there is still a lot of potential in those terms,”​ she said.